Christa Pike Must Still Be Executed Despite Left-Engineered Obstacles; Tennessee Should Adopt More Reliable Methods
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "The Left Has Made It Harder to Kill Christa Pike. She Must Die Anyway. | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." October 9, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author says Christa Pike committed a horrific murder and deserves to die, and that Tennessee's failed lethal injection doesn't change that. He blames liberal activists and courts for making executions harder and says the state should try again with a more dependable method like the firing squad, which it should legalize.
Conclusion
Despite the botched lethal injection, Tennessee must still execute Christa Pike, using a more reliable method such as the firing squad (which Tennessee should legalize), because the obstacles to execution stem from illegitimate leftist efforts and her crime merits the death penalty.
Premises
- Pike committed a premeditated, torturous murder, luring a classmate into the woods, mutilating her, and crushing her skull, which is among the most heinous of crimes.
- Retributive justice, grounded in America's Hebraic/Old Testament founding values and supported by a majority of Americans, holds that the proper response to the most heinous crimes is to take the criminal's life after due process.
- The Constitution explicitly contemplates capital punishment through the Fifth Amendment's due process clause, so the death penalty cannot be unconstitutional (per Scalia).
- Pike has received more than three decades of due process through appeals and stays, so the process requirement has been satisfied.
- Botched executions result from a decades-long leftist campaign of judicial restrictions on the death penalty and pressure on drug manufacturers to stop supplying lethal injection drugs.
- Firing squad is the most reliable and therefore most humane execution method, and alternatives such as the electric chair or gallows are also available.
Assumptions
- Retribution is a sufficient moral justification for capital punishment.
- Majority public opinion and the nation's religious heritage carry normative weight for what punishment is morally and legally appropriate.
- Supreme Court limits on the death penalty (e.g., for minors, intellectually disabled) are illegitimate judicial legislation rather than valid constitutional interpretation.
- Reliability of an execution method is the main criterion of its humaneness.
- A failed execution attempt does not create any legal or moral bar to a second attempt.
- Motives of opponents (a concerted effort to end capital punishment) discredit the obstacles they have created.